She's been badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after she witnessed a mass killing of Timorese demonstrators in what became known as the Dili Massacre. She's been arrested and detained by police at the 2008 Republican National Convention while covering protests there. She's appeared as a guest on the Colbert (pronounced: Colber) Report. She's written a New York Times bestseller. She's received dozens of awards for her journalistic work including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the George Polk Award. She was scheduled to receive the 2001 Overseas Press Club Award (but declined to accept it in protest of the Press Club's refusal to ask questions of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and because the Press Club was honoring Indonesia's more "humane" treatment of journalists [despite their having beaten and killed Australian journalists shortly before]. She was awarded in 2008 the alternative Nobel Prize (the Right Livelihood Award)--the first journalist ever to be so honored--by the Swedish Parliament.
She has a program on more than 700 radio stations. She's the principal host of a program that can be heard Monday to Fridays on the radio or on the web over at www.democracynow.org
Meet America's best investigative reporter: Amy Goodman. This small diary is a personal tribute to her and her work which does so much to bring to the public voices that the mainstream media neglects and asks questions that otherwise would never be posed. Our nation has been in crisis since the election of 2000: first that disputed election, then 9-11, then the awful Bush years, and now the economic crisis. It is critical that the public get unvarnished reporting; that the media not be dominated by the owners of major corporations and financial institutions that are being bailed out; that journalism be reinvigorated. Amy Goodman and Democracynow.org provide a shining example of what can be done and done on a relatively low budget without corporate shills or strings attached.
I. Amy Goodman on democracynow.org
I suspect many of you readers have never heard of Amy Goodman. But if you like(d) NPR radio (especially before it was neutered) or the old "McNeal Lehrer Program" on t.v. or the "News Hour" with Jim Lehrer, you'll like Amy Goodman's show over at democracynow.org It's structured pretty much the same way: first 5 minutes or so are major headlines, these are followed by in-depth interviews (and I mean in-depth).
What's especially nice about this is the flexibility that you the viewer or listener have. You can hear the program on the Pacifica stations while driving your car or sitting in a deck chair on your lawn. (You can find out the closest station by following this link: (http://www.democracynow.org/stations). The program is broadcast in a number of overseas countries including: Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and most of the Central and South American countries (in Spanish).
Or even more conveniently, you only need a computer and internet connection and type in www.democracynow.org There you can view the entire program (either live or from archives), you listen to the show (live or from archives) or if you have a slow connection or just plain like the written word, you can read transcripts from the show. Miss a program? No problem: the shows are archived. Thanks to poster Dancewater, who pointed out too that you can iPod the show. From their website:
Podcasting Democracy Now!
What is it?
"Podcasting" is a way to get the Democracy Now! daily show automatically downloaded to your computer or portable audio device. This is a nice convenience if you have a portable MP3 player or if you have a slow connection. You can also watch the show in video on your computer or portable media player, whenever you want.
Once you have things set up, you will always have access to the most recent shows, in audio or video format, ready for listening or watching!
http://www.democracynow.org/podcasting
AND ALL OF THIS IS FREE.
II. Here's an example of what you would have heard, seen or read (and still can) from her show of 19th March 2009:
A. Today's Headlines (on right hand side of the homepage)
These included:
Fed to Buy Up $1.2T in Bonds, Securities
The Federal Reserve has announced a massive new government intervention in the US economy. The Fed says it will buy up $1.2 trillion in government bonds and mortgage-linked securities to free up the frozen credit market. The purchases will increase the Fed’s holdings in financial markets to $3 trillion, an increase of 50 percent. The new mortgage securities purchase will account for more than half of the new spending, at $750 billion. That’s on top of the $500 billion in securities previously bought. According to analysts at Wachovia Bank, the federal government could end up funding up to 70 percent of mortgages issued this year.
Uncertainty Grows on When Admin Knew of AIG Bonuses
The Obama administration is facing questions on when it knew of AIG’s plans to hand out $165 million in bonuses after receiving its $170 billion taxpayer bailout. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he didn’t know until last week and only told White House officials two days after finding out. But testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday, AIG CEO Edward Liddy said government officials were informed three months ago. The Washington Post reports the Treasury was told at least one month ago.
AIG Exec: Employees to Give Back Half of Bonuses
Liddy, meanwhile, also defended the bonuses, saying they were essential to retaining top employees.
AIG CEO Edward Liddy: "Make no mistake. Had I been CEO at the time, I would never have approved the retention contracts that were put in place over a year ago. It was distasteful to have to make these payments. But we concluded that the risks to the company, and therefore the financial system and the economy, were unacceptably high."
Liddy says he’s asked a few hundred AIG executives and employees to give back at least half of the extra pay but refused to give details on who is keeping their bonuses. AIG is also facing questions on the billions of dollars in taxpayer money it used to repay other financial firms.
Dodd: Bonus Protections Added to Stimulus Bill at Admin’s Request
Questions, meanwhile, are also surrounding Treasury officials and lawmakers for political maneuvering that effectively authorized the executive bonuses with the passage of the stimulus bill last month. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden says he introduced a provision that would have forced bailout recipients to cap bonuses at $100,000 and tax those exceeding it at 35 percent. The measure passed through the Senate but was inexplicably removed during talks with the House. Meanwhile, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Christopher Dodd, is claiming he inserted a provision protecting contractually promised bonuses at the request of the Obama administration. Dodd didn’t name the administration officials who told him to insert the provision. He says he wouldn’t have done so had he known it would have allowed the bonuses at AIG.
And the following (here I'm just presenting the headlines which have the same kind of capsule coverage as the above):
**Fannie Mae to Hand Out Million-Dollar Bonuses
**Judge Orders Disclosure of Merrill Lynch Bonuses
**Military to Phase Out Forced Extensions by 2011
**Czech Government Forced to Drop Vote on US Missile System
**Minister: Iraq Considers Increased Stake for Oil Companies
**Judge Orders Continued al-Marri Jailing
**New Mexico Abolishes Death Penalty
**Study: Latinos Largest Ethnic Group in US Prisons
**Reparations, Israel Dropped from UN Racism Text
B. But the meat and potatoes of the show is the in-depth interviews that follow the headlines. Again from the Thursday, March 19th 2009 show: two people were interviewed. The first was long-time investigative reporter originally with the L.A. Times--Robert Scheer--now a syndicated columist with the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of the website, Truthdig. The second person interviewed was the Pakistani-British author Tariq Ali author of many books and a frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Nation, and the London Review of Books.
First, here are a few highlights from Scheer's interview which centered around AIG, the bailouts and the economy but also touched on the role of journalists:
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Scheer is with us now, longtime journalist, editor of the political website Truthdig. He’s author of a number of books; his forthcoming one is called The Great American Stickup: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them. His latest article on Truthdig is "Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses." He joins us from San Francisco.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert.
ROBERT SCHEER: Hi, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Perp walks?
ROBERT SCHEER: Yes. I mean, first of all, let me say, the bonuses—I think it’s an important glimpse into the cesspool that is Wall Street, but it’s a side show, you know, and I know it’s confusing—millions, billions, trillions. But the real scandal is—the money—AIG is basically a shell game at this point, and they’re passing the money through AIG to the big banks, the former stockbrokers and so forth. Goldman Sachs got the biggest amount, $12.5 billion. The head of AIG was on the board of directors and the head of the audit committee for Goldman Sachs for five years. The Treasury Secretary that put this deal together, Paulson, under Bush was the head, was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. The guy who administered the TARP fund was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. The Democrat who made all of this deregulation possible, Robert Rubin, when he was Secretary of Treasury, and then Lawrence Summers who followed him, Rubin had been the head of Goldman Sachs. And they pushed through the basic deregulation that allowed these banks to become too big to allow to fail.
So while I think it’s a terrific teaching moment to see how excessive the pay is for people who basically brought the world economy to its knees, which are these so-called executives, and I think there is a real phony in that they had to be given these bonuses for retention—Andrew Cuomo, in his letter to Barney Frank, pointed out that the eleven of the top people who got these bonuses have already left the firm, so that really doesn’t hold water. But I think the real scandal here is that we’re supposed to own 80 percent of AIG, and maybe the Fed and the Treasury are in on it, but basically it’s being used as a shell to pass on money to these banks, Goldman Sachs being the leading one, and that should be examined, because I think that is really a criminal waste of our money.
And this on UBS and Timothy Geithner:
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest in San Francisco, Robert Scheer, veteran journalist, has written a number of books, and his latest article is "Perp Walks Instead of Bonuses." But, Juan, I wanted to ask you something: in your latest column in the New York Daily News, you were specifically writing about UBS, the Swiss bank, that got, what, $5 billion bailout from AIG?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right, yeah. I think in the same vein as Bob Scheer is talking about, yes, UBS got $5 billion last fall from AIG. And interestingly, Bob, I’m sure you’re aware, UBS was at that very moment involved in a federal case in Florida, charges that it was—had conspired with Americans who held secret accounts at UBS in Switzerland to evade federal taxes. Just a month ago, it paid—it agreed to pay $780 million in fines to the US government, but is still resisting releasing the names of these 50,000 Americans who were evading taxes with the help of UBS. So now you have UBS getting bailout money, $5 billion, through AIG and then paying the federal government $780 million in fines for tax evasion. It’s astounding that this continues to happen. And I think you’ve correctly pointed out that the big scandal here is the amount of money that AIG is basically being used as a pass-through for all of these other banks.
ROBERT SCHEER: Oh, there’s no question about it. And you should point out that UBS—that one of the officers of UBS is Phil Gramm, who was the Republican head of the Senate Finance Committee who pushed through the deregulation legislation, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, the Financial Services Modernization Act, which made—allowed this to happen, which made these crimes legal. And, I mean, these people have no shame. This guy is an officer of a foreign company that we American taxpayers are paying for having caused all of this suffering. That is what I find astounding about this.
First of all, I think that the whole argument that they’re too big to fail is utter nonsense. That’s why we have bankruptcy courts. If you can’t pay your bill, you go through bankruptcy court, there’s a resolution of it. There’s absolutely no reason why AIG couldn’t have gone the way of Lehman. It didn’t go the way of Lehman because the head of Goldman Sachs was in on the meeting with Timothy Geithner, who was then head of the New York Federal Reserve, when they decided to save AIG hours after Lehman was allowed to go down the tubes. Why? Because Goldman Sachs had $20 billion insured by AIG. And the CEO of Goldman Sachs was in on that meeting—the only CEO. This is one of the great financial scandals of American history. I don’t know why that’s not being investigated. I think Timothy Geithner should be asked a lot of tough questions. I think he should be asked to resign, frankly, by the President, because he’s up to his eyeballs in this.
And this wonderful exchange which covers the role of the media and shows how journalism has been corrupted:
ROBERT SCHEER: Yeah, well, I couldn’t agree more. You know, I worked for the Los Angeles Times in one capacity or another for almost thirty years, and a few months ago we were told that we no longer have retiree medical. Period. Goodbye. It’s gone. You know, I had been paying for it for years. Suddenly I don’t have retiree medical. They broke that contract, that agreement, because they’re in bankruptcy now, the Tribune Company. Workers all over the country are experiencing that.
These contracts, by the way, were drawn up a year ago, and what is ugly about them is they were guaranteed 100 percent of their 2007 bonus, even though the people running AIG at that time knew darn well that they were going to have a disastrous year, losing hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet they wrote in a 100 percent guarantee.
What we’re seeing is how this financial market works: they take care of each other. They feather their nests. And the amount of money they take is obscene. Obscene. You know, hundreds of millions of dollars—for failing! You know, the head of AIG, when he was on the board of directors, according to Forbes, was paid $650,000 for being a director of that company, a company that was engaged in these toxic investments. So these guys—this whole notion of a bonus as something you get for doing well is—they don’t respect that. They reward people for failing. That’s the key to the system, evidently.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Scheer, finally, the journalist’s role in all of this? Every week, it seems, we’re talking about the folding of another newspaper. We just saw the closing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Now it will just be online. Tucson Citizen, the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia papers, the Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle in big trouble, even the New York Times, also the Washington Post. What about the role of not only the newspapers, but also the networks in this?
ROBERT SCHEER: Well, you know, the good old days were not so good for mainstream journalism, and certainly not when it came to covering business stories. At your traditional newspaper, you had, you know, maybe fifty—a big newspaper like the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, fifty, a hundred, people covering business. Maybe you had one consumer writer, one labor writer, one writer covering these things from the interests of ordinary people. Much of the reporting was done by press releases.
I covered the Financial Services Modernization Act, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, when I was working as their columnist at the Los Angeles Times. I saw very few mainstream reporters there. There was no critical reporting of those stories. They basically went along with what the lobbyists want. Bank of America and the other banks spent $300 million that year getting the legislation—their license to steal, in effect—and it was not covered. The Telecommunications Act was not covered.
So, yes, I hate to see journalists, good journalists, losing their jobs. I wonder who’s going to pay for the reporting and do the really good reporting that has been done in many areas? But business reporting has been a scandal. Why? Because the same people who own the newspapers benefit from the tax breaks, benefit from the loopholes. They’re on the other side. I mean, General Electric, which is in trouble, after all, owns NBC. So these are not pristine owners. There are some exceptions of some families that have tried to do a good job, but in the main, the people running media in America, who own it, benefit and want the kind of deregulation of the whole business community that has brought us to our knees.
For reasons of time and space, I won't go over Tariq Ali's interview in depth. Suffice it to say that he: expressed concerns about the disintegration of Pakistan; voiced support for the reinstatement of Pakistan's Chief Justice (who interestingly had been opposed by the United States--something I have not heard reported elsewhere which is why I like this program so much); and, indicated Obama is making a mistake by seeking a military rather than a social-economic solution in Afghanistan.
As I mentioned, another nice feature of democracynow.org is the archives. So in addition to the current show you can look at leisure at past ones if you missed them. You do this from the home page by scrolling down to "Browse Recent Shows" which has the last 2 weeks or so or by clicking on "Browse Entire Archive."
If you are interested in health care reform I especially recommend the 11th March 2009 show which had a superb interview with Dr. Quentin Young, Obama's early health care advisor, and information from the 150,000 strong nurses association and another advocate for single payer health care.
Note: there is also a version in Spanish at the web site.
II. A little more about Amy Goodman
A 1984 graduate of Harvard University, Goodman is best known as the principal host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! program.
Michael Della Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said, "She's not an editorialist. She sticks to the facts. She's not a Rush Limbaugh-type who is simply letting her ideology drive what she does. She provides points of view that make you think, and she comes at it by saying, 'Who are we not hearing from in the traditional media?"
In 1985 Amy Goodman became news director of WBAI in New York City, where she had worked as an intern; she would be its news director for a decade. In 1990-91 she and Allan Nairn traveled to East Timor, where they witnessed Indonesian troops gun down 270 people. Their documentary, "Massacre: The Story of East Timor," won the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton award. Goodman's approach to journalism, she said in a prize acceptance speech, is:
"Go where the silence is and say something."
In 1998 Goodman and producer Jeremy Scahill went to Nigeria to film their documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship", which won the George Polk Award.
Goodman is a close friend and ideological comrade of MIT professor Noam Chomsky. She is also a friend of Professor Norman Finkelstein, while Professor Cornel West calls himself a great admirer of Goodman.
"Amy Goodman is an extraordinary journalist, in the grand American tradition of Lincoln Steffens, Heywood Broun, I.F. Stone," said Howard Zinn, a prominent historian and frequent guest on Democracy Now! "Her contribution to our culture is unique, bringing information and ideas to her listeners which they cannot see in the major media."
In 2004 Goodman published her first book, a New York Times bestseller, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (ISBN 1-4013-0799-X), co-written with her brother, Mother Jones reporter David Goodman.
Their second book, published in August 2006, is entitled, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People who Fight Back (ISBN 1-4013-0293-9). She appeared on the Colbert Report on Thursday October 5, 2006 to promote the book. Their third book, Standing up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (ISBN 1-4013-2288-3), which details the capabilities of ordinary citizens to enact change, was released on April 8, 2008.
Goodman also writes a weekly column called "Breaking the Sound Barrier," for King Features Syndicate. In her first piece, released October 24, 2006, she wrote, "My column will include voices so often excluded, people whose views the media mostly ignore, issues they distort and even ridicule."
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/...
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PS. The only affiliation that the writer of this diary has with Amy Goodman and/or Democracynow.org is that he is an enthusiastic supporter and listener.
I'm particularly impressed that this program seems to be done with small resources including no corporate support and a small staff (I'm guessing under 12). It's a great example of what can be done and an antidote to the gloomy news from mainstream dinosaur newspapers about the demise of journalism. For me, sitting down and watching or listening to Amy Goodman on Democracynow is like eating fine cuisine at an exquisite French or Italian Bistro as opposed to gulping down those greasy servings of tastless burghers and fries cooked up by the mainstream media people.
From http://www.democracynow.org/...
For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information.
But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogeneous in the early 1980s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media.
In addition, corporate media outlets in the U.S. are legally responsible to their shareholders to maximize profits.
And U.S. "public" media outlets accept funding from major corporations, as well as from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has attempted in the past to exert political and editorial influence on public news producers.
Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. We do not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding. This allows us to maintain our independence.